KARACHI, Dec 11: Participants of a seminar on the impact of WikiLeaks on Pakistan on Saturday observed that the cable leaks had widened the credibility gap and trust deficit between people and leaders.
The session was chaired by Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) chairperson Masooma Hassan and addressed by former ambassador Mansoor Alam and former PFUJ secretary-general Mazhar Abbas.
Mr Alam sharing the traditional norms of international diplomacy said that secrecy and counter-secrecy were extremely important doctrines, particularly for major world powers.
“Personal information about leaders of other countries constitutes an extremely important tool of diplomacy. No state-level or high-powered visit can be undertaken without detailed briefs on the personal traits and characteristics of each other’s leaders and senior members of their delegations. From our point of view, the WikiLeaks had caused greatest damage to Pakistan,” he said, adding that “they have exposed every major section of our ruling class, politicians, bureaucrats, military and the mullahs, the worst-affected being President (Asif Ali) Zardari, General (Ashfaque Pervez) Kayani, Nawaz Sharif and Maulana Fazlur Rehman.”
The ambassador said that as for Pakistan, it was difficult to say if the WikiLeaks was going to lead to any major changes in its politics, but what was obvious was that it had heightened tensions between its various institutions. It was bound to affect the process of governance and might even lead to major changes in due course of time, he added.
“The WikiLeaks has also widened the credibility gap and trust deficit between the people and leaders of Pakistan,” he observed, and apprehended that it was also going to aggravate the tense situation and mistrust between Pakistan and the US, and even Saudi Arabia and UAE.
In future, sincerity of attitude in purpose which served as an important plank of bilateral relations would suffer greatly, said Mr Alam.
According to him, the worst loser of WikiLeaks is the USA. No Pakistanis or leaders of any other country will speak so freely and frankly with American leaders and diplomats for fear of such leaks. The US sincerity, which has always been doubtful in many countries, will suffer further loss. It will make even difficult for the US to assure others of its sincerity.
“Consequently, they may be forced to increase the use of bribes and strong arms tactics to achieve their ends,” he said.The US relations with other major world powers like Russia, China and India will be affected. Russia has already expressed its resentment about the US-Nato plans to give protection to Baltic and East European countries. Similarly, US-China relations are going to be adversely affected.
WikiLeaks revelation about “strong advice given by Arab countries to the US to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear programme” may cause heaviest ever damage to bilateral relations between certain Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran because it gives the impression that the Arab countries are not as opposed to Israel having nuclear weapons as they are to Iran developing nuclear weapons.